


Aftermath

by lucdarling



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Angst and Feels, Gen, Grief/Mourning, I'm Sorry, Minor Maxine "Max" Mayfield/Lucas Sinclair, Post-Episode: s03e08 The Battle of Starcourt, Post-Season/Series 03
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-23
Updated: 2020-02-23
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:15:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22869211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lucdarling/pseuds/lucdarling
Summary: Max Mayfield, after the battle and leaving her brother on the ground, comes to terms with her new reality.
Relationships: Billy Hargrove & Maxine "Max" Mayfield, Maxine "Max" Mayfield/Lucas Sinclair
Comments: 17
Kudos: 46





	Aftermath

She takes his pendant before Lucas leads her away. The mall is blurry through her tears, and she stumbles over a chunk of tile and then the stairs. Lucas stays by her side until they reach the ambulances. The calvary which arrived too late.

The taxpayer’s dollars at work, a day late and a dollar short - it’s a thought she hears in her step-father’s voice and Max shivers in the misting rain. How is she supposed to explain this to her mom?

The government feeds them a story to tell everyone, after Max has signed enough paperwork to make her hand cramp. It turns out the amount of forms for knowing about a Russian base under a mall in nowhere Indiana almost rivals the amount from last autumn, when El had closed the gate.

Max is too tired to think about funerals and bodies, not when El is wailing into Ms. Byers’s shoulder and Lucas still hasn’t let go of her hand. He’s warm and she still feels so very cold.

The government lady, blond hair in a no-nonsense bun and bright blue glasses, takes her to the house on Cherry Lane. Her mom answers the door and looks horrified at everything Max is covered in, then confused at the lack of Camaro in the driveway.

“He’s not coming home,” Max says in a clipped tone. Her voice hurts from crying and her face throbs. It’s been less than 24 hours since the Mind Flayer crashed through the Starcourt skylight and Billy fought it off with El lying behind him. He fought it off for all of them and she feels like crying but that’s a dangerous thing in this house.

The bruise on her cheek is the last mark she’ll ever wear from her brother, even if it wasn’t really him who gave it to her. They had gotten closer in the past months, acting like real siblings with the summer heat driving them out of the house and away from his dad whenever Billy had a day off from the pool and gas in the tank.

She’ll never have his awful music rumbling in her ears as she falls asleep on the other side of her bedroom wall. She wonders if her mom will drive her to the first day of high school in a few month’s time. Max hates this.

Her mom is quietly sobbing downstairs and Max wonders if the government lady is holding her hand, offering a tissue. She can’t bring herself to join them.

 _I’m sorry_ she hears Billy whisper as she walks by his room, door wide open and room dark. Max doesn’t step inside on her way to the bathroom. 

She sees more empty ice packs in the bathroom and darts to pull out the trash can from under the sink, retching. It’s only bile and the water she had choked down in the back of an ambulance in the mall parking lot. Max doesn’t remember the last time she ate something and she half expects it to be black but it’s normal. 

Max isn’t sure she knows what normal is any more. 

She washes the very long day off, watches the dirt swirl down the drain and tells herself it’s okay to cry with the water pounding on her skin. The tears don’t fall.

Billy’s room stays empty and dark for the whole week. She doesn’t hear his voice again and she doesn’t cross the threshold of the door.

There’s a graveside service. Max doesn’t share the names of Billy’s hangers on when her mom asks in a wavering voice who should be invited. They don’t know him, not really.

She takes Steve his invitation on her bike, legs churning furiously. Max has listened to the party talk in soft murmurs in the night time and turned off the walkie when she’s on the edge of sleep. She never contributes to the conversations, not even when Lucas asks her in a soft voice to please talk to him, like she’s glass about to break.

Neil has left her alone, and Max is thankful. She feels prickly and also like time is moving in waves, too slow at night when she stares at her ceiling and listens to her friends but the daytime goes too fast. It’s all a blur, or maybe that’s her exhaustion speaking.

She sleeps in snatches, covers thrown over her head to block the afternoon sun.

Her mom comes into her room during one of these times and sits on the edge of her bed. “I know you miss him. He was okay at the end, wasn’t he?” She doesn’t say his name and Max curls away from her.

Her own scream rings in her ears, his name followed by his choked apology. _I’m sorry_ Billy says to her when she closes her eyes. Sorry for leaving her alone in this house, sorry for not being a better brother after the move, sorry for not fighting hard enough against an interdimensional monster.

Max cries in her sleep that he had done the best he could, he had been enough, good enough. She wakes up with damp pillows and sunlight warming her room because summer isn’t over even if she feels like she lives in a fog lately. She kicks off the covers, sweaty and tear stained. She wants to slide back into the darkness of Morpheus, to hear Billy’s voice again.

She knows it doesn’t work like that.

His room isn’t dusty, which surprises her. It’s been untouched for a month Max thinks, because the passage of time isn’t something she’s good at any longer. She holds her breath when she enters, inhaling when she lays on his bed. It’s a little gross, boy sweat and the cologne he wore too much of and hairspray. It’s the closest she’s been to her brother since she was pulled away from his body.

She keeps his pendant in her jewelry box alongside the cheap bracelets her mom bought her at age twelve and hair clips she’s outgrown. 

Max prowls his room, rolling her eyes at nudie magazines and skimming over school essays tucked in a folder. She runs a hand over the clothes left hanging up. It’s like he’s running an errand and will appear in the doorway to give her grief about touching his things. She wishes he would, knows it’s fruitless to hope.

Max takes his denim jacket when she leaves and shuts the door to his room. It won’t fit her now, it might not ever fit because she’s probably going to grow up fine boned like her mother and Billy had broad shoulders, bulked up with years of weight lifting.

She wears it and his pendant on the first day of high school even though it’ll be too warm for long sleeves when the last bell sets them free. The party doesn’t say anything, Mike keeps his mouth shut and gives her a twisted grimace that might charitably be called a smile when he pulls his eyes away from El at the bike rack. They get along better now that they’ve almost died together, but sometimes they clash, too much alike. Max starts talking to Lucas again, listening to him complain about how terrible the science teacher is compared to their beloved Mr. Clarke and letting him hold her hand as they walk down hallways filled with normal kids who don’t have nightmares or are haunted by ghosts.

The Byers move almost halfway through the first semester, because everything seems to happen in October. Max doesn’t blame them for not wanting another anniversary celebrated in Hawkins. She rides her bike over to the house at the end of the road to tease Dustin about Suzie who they still haven't seen a photo of and their stupid song, helping El pack up her room. She gives her a stack of Wonder Woman comics and hugs her friend tight.

Max wraps herself around Lucas’s arm as the cars pull out and disappear around the corner. She knows she’ll see them again, Thanksgiving plans have already been made. 

Max goes home to an empty house. She’s tired of the rip of packing tape and playing Tetris with the pieces of El’s life to fit each shirt and figurine into a box but the quiet isn't any less loud in her head.

She puts a hand on the door of Billy’s room and it swings open under the gentle push. It’s just a room now; Neil emptied it when Max was at school with no warning. He let her keep the jacket, likely only because she had left it in her locker on accident.

She never takes the pendant off just in case.

She doesn’t enter his room - it will always be his room even though none of his stuff is in it and he’s been gone for three months - and goes into her own. Max takes the jacket out of her closet and slips it on. Her fingers barely stick out from the sleeves and the shoulders swamp her own thin ones. She hugs herself, wearing her brother’s jacket and wishes she had one more chance to say all the things she thought she’d have time to find the words for.

**Author's Note:**

> I watched season 3 and then this idea wouldn't leave me alone.


End file.
